Comed Chief Steps Out Of Role As Shock Absorber

September 17, 1999|By David Greising.

John Rowe looks better without the hard hat.

Commonwealth Edison's chairman and chief executive on Wednesday doffed the plastic headpiece he wore during ComEd's blackout-filled August, and suited up for the role he prefers: man in charge, man with a mission.

"I have probably done enough apologizing," he said, when asked if he owes customers an apology for multiple blackouts this summer. It seemed a strange question, given Rowe did too much apologizing but not enough fixing. Kind of like asking Hurricane Floyd if it could give more rain to North Carolina.

Rowe knows this. And he knows what ComEd's customers demand. "We owe them performance," he said.

This was the John Rowe we like to see. The opposite of the hapless and angry executive who had to take the heat for this summer's failures. Again, and again, and again.

For many of us, Rowe is like a perplexing kid brother. One minute, he infuriates us with his empty apologies. The next, we can't resist his promises to mend his ways and move on.

Partly because we like him, and partly because we're stuck with him, we give him one more chance.

Rowe is promising to change Commonwealth Edison's culture, and he's promising results. We've seen enough of ComEd's culture of failure to know he won't get one without the other.

"There's no simple recipe," Rowe stated, moving halfway to the truth.

The fact is, there is no recipe at all. There is no formula he can follow for changing the culture of an entrenched, century-old ComEd bureaucracy beset by arrogance, ineptitude and stubbornness.

But Rowe is going to try, and in this we wish him well.

We're a lot like Spartan mothers cheering their sons into battle. We want Rowe to return triumphantly carrying his ComEd hard hat under his arm, or see him carried out in it if he fails.

How tough is the job?

ComEd's experts killed half a forest laying out the task in an 800-page, two-part report. Talk about hair-raising page turners. There's a scare on almost every page of the report. It's a case of McKinsey & Co. meets Stephen King.

The report makes it clear that Rowe faces the doubly challenging job of fixing ComEd's short-sighted, see-no-evil culture while still operating an overtaxed system that will break down at the slightest provocation.

ComEd's system is underbuilt in part, the report reveals, because ComEd planners have used only temperature averages to predict demand. They blithely ignore the powerful impact of peaks like the summer heat waves that brought down the Lakefront and the Loop.

The dysfunctional ComEd family communicates so poorly that ComEd's transmission planners receive information a full seven months after the distribution planners get the same data. Nothing gets done on time.

This year, more than one third of the "critical" repair jobs slated before the summer started were not completed by the date required. Repairs on nearly 2,000 relay switches are listed as overdue. There's no comprehensive system for monitoring equipment.

Rowe knows that corporate culture is a squishy thing. He knows that most people in business are skeptical when CEOs claim they can transform a culture.

Nations don't change their culture. People don't change their personalities. There's not much reason to hope that companies can change the way they act.

But Rowe thinks he can do it. He wants to make individuals accountable, give them measurable targets and hard deadlines. And let them know they've got to get it done, or get out.

Rowe should keep that hard hat around.

He'll need it for the gritty work ahead, or for protection against the brickbats if he can't deliver.